Theme and objective: To illustrate how the representation of objects affect peoples thinking by altering their states of mind.
Relevance of the topic
Images have a very profound effect on the viewer’s mind frame. This is especially so if the person can relate to the object or event presented in the picture. Advertisers have for a long time known that they can use images to alter people’s states of mind and in a way manipulate them into purchasing certain products. This has been the principle behind the attractive billboards and magazine page advertisements. Psychiatrists have also been known to use certain images in order to identify their patients’ states of mind through assessing how they (they patients) associate certain images with events in their lives.
Motivation
Goya’s Devouring Monster and graphics from psychedelic art, have been a substantial shift in the viewers’ state of mind and which in turn influences their decision making process. In countries such as Kenya and Rwanda which had at one time or another been affected by politically-instigated ethnic cleansing, exhibitions have been held in public squares depicting images of rotting corpses and people hacking each other with machetes. The organisers of these presentations know that the images will certainly evoke feelings of sadness and remorse in the people, with an aim of making them change their opinions regarding fellow compatriots. There have even been reports of the killers during the wars in the two countries coming to the public and confessing their involvement after seeing images of the pain and destruction caused by them. Hypnotists and magicians have also been known to use certain images to make people respond in certain ways. The latter use certain images including mirror reflections to trick people into believing everything they are seeing.
Theoretical thesis work
The role of images to mould people’s thought processes through alteration of their states of mind will be analyzed based on secondary data. Data will be еxtractеd from various journals, articles and books. Thе criteria of sеlеction for thе litеraturе will be rеlеvancе to thе rеsеarch topic and thе yеar of publication. Both public and privatе librariеs as wеll as onlinе librariеs were visitеd to accеss thе data. Somе of thе onlinе databasеs that were accessed include Ebsco, Quеstia, Emеrald and Science Direct among others. This research will be partly evidence based and partly founded on professional research by professionals in the field. Various articles will be studied in order to provide background information which will essentially give credibility to the final essay. Information from the books will serve to provide explanation as regards to the psychiatric effects of images and graphical representations. This is very vital information that will make the research appeal to both professionals and the general public. For the latter, it may require that some of the information obtained from the books and other publications be broken down into simple language and at the same time illustrations drawn from the commonly applied functionalities of the stock market. Empirical data will also be collected from various cultural and scientific studies, with numbers and figures used to illustrate the usage of various hypotheses in a practical situation. Like with any other professional field of study, Art and Design researches have to be conducted in such a way that the offer credibility to the practitioner. In such a practical-based field, the strength lies in the figures and numbers obtained from real life scenarios to support collected evidence. With this knowledge in mind, effort will be made to obtain relevant information to the particular topic in question and this will be accompanied by adequate exemplification.
Creative Thesis work
To actually prove the relevance of the research, I will put the theoretical knowledge to practical use through experiments that illustrate how images can affect to people’s states of mind. To this end I will select a group of individuals and have them discuss on a social issue, for instance the impact of using sports utility vehicles (SUVs) on the acceleration of the global warming process. Like with any group discussion, there are bound to be individuals with radical opinions; in this instance, I speculate that some random person may actually support the usage of big cars at the expense of the climate. I will then produce images of drying rivers in Africa and the suffering of starving children as a consequence of damages on the climate occasioned by emissions from industrialized countries. This might cause a shift in the person’s thinking and therefore alter his state of mind to be more sympathetic.
Objective
I will measure my success based on the observable differences in the opinions of individuals prior to and after seeing a certain image. Other professionals in the field should accept the relevance of my work based on the tangible proof I produce of the notable alteration of a person’s state of mind using images (Pictures, images and graphics).